How to avoid embarrassing holiday party pics

Barack Obama’s speechwriter nearly lost his job over a Facebook photo last week.

(Scott Eklund/Seattle P-I)

The picture showed 27-year-old Jon Favreau holding the chest area of a cardboard cutout of future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, presumably at a party. It appeared on the site for a whole two hours before it was taken down. Next day, columnists and commentators called for his resignation. (They didn’t get it.)

The lesson, as columnist Kathleen Parker at The Washington Post put it, is “Smart grown-ups in Washington don’t get drunk in public.”

OK. What about smart grown-ups in Seattle?

‘Tis the season of holiday parties, and despite the new risks of a new world, most of us still feel OK putting down a drink or two and letting loose with our colleagues. But the online threat of crude, swift, equal-opportunity humiliation raises the question: Do new times demand new party picture etiquette?

“Personally, I avoid all pictures when I’m drinking,” wrote Eric Pratum, who works in Bellevue. “Too many things can be misconstrued even when it’s innocent to you.”
Blogger Patricia Eddy might pose for a picture, but goes easy on the alcohol. “Don’t get drunk enough to risk it,” she wrote. “Anything done in public is fair game for the Internet.”

But for Seattle Twitterer fva, it’s more about who’s around than what you’re doing. “Don’t get drunk ’til the afterparty,” she wrote, “preferably w/close friends at private location :)”

Everyone should know by now that companies and potential employers won’t hesitate to look you up on social media sites.

“We try not to utilize these things ’cause they are social situations, but everyone has their own way of looking at it,” said Karen Fenstermacher, president of the Seattle Society of Human Resource Management. “My advice is to just be cautious and just be practical.”

Whatever your personal policy, one mistake would be to think that a picture of little old you wouldn’t get far in the big new Web. You don’t have to be friends with the next president to get attention. Not anymore.

“Anybody could be Paris Hilton now. Anybody could be Britney Spears getting out of a car,” said Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos. “If it happens, it doesn’t matter who they are. It matters that it’s revealing.”